Suddenly, I saw my journey into the world of photography in a single motif, there, in a clearing in the forest. For the most part, I fumble around in the dark, experimenting with different forms of expression, but occasionally, I encounter small pockets of clarity where my photographic work makes sense.
The path disappears again into the darkness, and the destination remains a mystery. Hopefully, I will soon encounter another clearing so I don’t get completely lost. Thus, I move around in the world of photography with a few fixed points by which I navigate.
Am I speaking in riddles? Are your journeys always linear? Do you always know the destination of the journeys you embark on?
Take a look at your resume. Were all the steps you took in your career part of a well-thought-out and predefined plan?
That’s the kind of retrospective reasoning most of us do when sitting in a job interview. We want to leave the impression that we are following a master plan, where each logical step follows the next. But where in the resume does it show that we are on a journey through the unknown? Where can you see that we sometimes take detours because we experiment with new ideas that just didn’t work out? Where in the resume do life’s coincidences appear?
My own career and my photographic journeys share many parallels. They often venture into uncharted territory and are marked by a willingness to take risks and experiment. They can feel like a fumbling walk along a dark forest path, but fortunately, there are clearings along the way where, for a moment, everything makes sense.